Is it time to just get over the NEP?

Pierre Trudeau in a speech to the B.C. Central Credit Union in Vancouver Feb. 19, 1981 defended his governments controversial national energy program and constitutional plans. The NEP still casts a long shadow over resource policy making in Canada as well as our regional politics. CP/Nick Didlick

Hang around the House of Commons Natural Resources committee long enough, and sooner or later you’ll hear someone mention the dreaded National Energy Program.

“I am one of those westerners who gets a little bit nervous when people start talking about energy programs,” said Albertan MP Blaine Calkins, a government member on the committee, during a discussion on pipelines and refineries in February.

Since those wintry meetings, several political footballs have turned the energy file into even more of a regionalist wedge issue: the debate over Canada possibly suffering from ‘Dutch disease’ and the push for a national energy strategy.

And then last week, Liberal MP David McGuinty opened his mouth.

“(Albertan government MPs) really should go back to Alberta and run either for municipal council in a city that’s deeply affected by the oilsands business or go run for the Alberta legislature,” McGuinty told a Sun Media reporter.

Soon, all hell broke loose.

Liberal leader Bob Rae apologized and McGuinty resigned as the party’s resource critic. A video of Liberal leadership candidate Justin Trudeau surfaced in which he criticized the influence of Alberta’s social and civic values, forcing him to apologize as well. A chance for the Liberals to win a Calgary Centre byelection may have been blown. The Conservatives alleged there was some deep anti-Alberta bias at the heart of the Liberal party.

David McGuinty speaks to reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons. CP/Sean Kilpatrick

“I find it shameful, not surprising, that 30 years after the National Energy Program, these anti-Alberta attitudes are still close to the surface in the Liberal party,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper the day after McGuinty’s remarks were published.

Political feeding frenzies aside, the McGuinty sideshow masks a more important truth about resource policy in Canada — not every debate over resources needs to be set in regionalist tones.

This year’s push by the Harper government for more oil drilling, mineral excavation and natural gas fracking has sometimes gone down the regionalist road, sometimes not.

While Dutch disease and talk of a national energy strategy did push some East vs. West buttons, other elements, like the government’s deregulation of environmental assessments for industrial projects in the spring’s budget bill, avoided descending into that kind of territory. Climate change policy, despite being more challenging for Alberta and Saskatchewan than the rest of the country, also tends not to get too ugly.

Why do resources still divide us?

While the squabbles over resources between Ottawa and the Western provinces go back a century, it’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s NEP that gets the most opprobrium.

But Brad Trost, a mining exploration geophysicist turned Saskatchewan MP, said that program is only a rallying point.

“It’s not just the NEP,” said Trost, one of four Conservative MPs from Western Canada on the natural resources committee. “You listen to Mr. Mulcair’s reference to Dutch disease … it’s the underlying attitude that the resource regions of the country are there to serve other parts of the country.

“That attitude of treating Western Canada as colonies, as secondary, to the core area of the country is just wrong. NEP is the symbol and I suspect that people who have no memory of what it is understand what we mean when we say it.”

There is also the element of looking down on resource development as less sophisticated and important than other industries, said Trost.

“It’s not that they’re disrespecting our resources,” he said. “They’re disrespecting the people who actually produce the resource by saying your interests are secondary to others people’s interest . . . ‘Get in line, you’re not as important.’”

Brad Trost speak at a candidate’s forum on April 21, 2011. CP/Liam Richards

How divided are we?

Walk around Calgary and you’ll hear some people sharing some very stupid ideas about Francophones. Walk around Montreal and you’ll hear some people saying dumb things about the oilsands.

But on the whole, regionalist platitudes like those McGuinty expressed aren’t very popular, said Trost.

“The attitudes are not as widespread in the general population,” he said. “In the end, you see the reaction from the fellow Liberals who have distanced themselves from Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Mulcair hasn’t quite distanced himself because he seems to be looking for a different demographic.”

David Anderson, another Saskatchewan government MP, said the natural resources committee is hardly as acrimonious as McGuinty’s comments suggest.

“We’ve had a really good working relationship with everybody at that committee where we’ve been able to work collegially,” said Anderson.

The committee’s current topic of study, innovation in the energy sector, was brought forward by the NDP and gladly accepted by the government members, he said.

“Then out of the blue Mr. McGuinty made his comments,” said Anderson. “It had nothing to do with western MPs initiating anything like this.”

Is the resource push regionalist?

The heart of the matter is whether supporting resource development is only good for one region.

There’s no doubt Harper’s policies have helped the heartland, but the Conservatives sell it as a national benefit.

“The reality is that energy benefits are spread out across the country,” said Anderson.

But chew into the economics and things get complicated.

If you’re a believer in the Dutch disease theory, like Mulcair or the OECD, you’re not going to buy it.

If you believe that markets out of your control have pushed resource prices sky-high and being a producer rather than a consumer is good for the economy, like the Conservatives and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, then you see the resource push as a truly national boon.

“You look at the Ring of Fire, you look at Plan Nord, you look at the development offshore, you look at the North … it’s clear that all across this country there is an abundance of resources,” said Anderson.

If any of the current irritants on the East-West ledger appear more irreducibly regionalist, it’s Dutch disease.

Whether it’s right or not, the notion promotes the fact that one industry must fall for the other to survive — manufacturing or primary resources. You can’t have both.

On the other hand, the environmental deregulation the Conservatives have been putting in place doesn’t necessarily need to benefit one region over the other.

A Suncor oilsands mine facility seen from the air near Fort McMurray, Alta. The oilsands have become a key political football Canadian regionalism. CP/Jeff McIntosh

Both NDP leader Mulcair and Rae have expressed the view that the oilsands don’t need to be shut down, just regulated in a much more sustainable fashion.

Remember, climate change is not going away: it’s important that economic concerns and environmental concerns around resources aren’t conflated.

If they are – and debating environmental policy is used to divide Canadians based on where they live – politicians will be milking this wedge for a long time to come.

Whose fault is it?

In an era of high commodity prices and a warming planet, the habit of repeatedly tainting resource policy with regionalist politics may only get worse. So who is to blame for fanning the flames?

“I don’t bring this up until I feel that Alberta is being either shunned or being disrespected in such a way by these kinds of arrogant comments,” said Calkins. “I wasn’t looking for a pedestal to stand on this particular issue until the comments that were made by members of the Liberal party.”

With the West’s economic, demographic and political power on the rise, you’d think maybe one day there will be a time to get over the NEP and its precedents. Then, policy makers could juggle the highly complex questions around energy, resources and the future of the planet in a new light.

But on Thursday, Calkins successfully passed a motion at the natural resources committee to haul McGuinty and Trudeau before the members to explain their comments last week.

This, despite the fact Trudeau’s remarks never dealt with resources, and the committee deals specifically with that topic.